What’s your number?

Boy, do we love a bit of useless movie trivia in the MM office. That’s how we spend our days. Mia sends us emails with pictures of lobsters. Nat bangs on about touch footy. And I send emails that start with, “Hey did you know that Ryan Gosling built the kitchen table featured in The Notebook as preparation for his role as Noah?” (At which point Lucy swoons and then tells me that Rick’s reaction is to pretend to stab himself in the eye with his biro). Lana meanwhile is running the site. And baking. Simultaneously.

Now here’s a bit of movie trivia that started an interesting conversation between us all on Skype chat. In the new movie What’s Your Number? the producers apparently had to “test” the lead character’s number of sexual partners to find a number that was, er, appropriate for today’s audience. Because the lead character in the flick is a woman. You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down? Woman + number of sexual partners = judgment. If she’d slept with too many men, the producers said female audiences would think the character was a slut. Harsh but true, apparently. And if the number of her sexual conquests was too few, well, anyone watching with a higher number might feel promiscuous.

Decisions. Decisions.

Finding an “acceptable” number was quite the juggle apparently. And in the end they decided on 20. The premise of the movie? If you’ve slept with more than 20 people you’re less likely to find love.

In an interview with the SMH, when asked whether 20 partners was a lot for a woman to have slept with, lead actress Anna Faris said:

I think it’s a totally appropriate number but I also think, ‘Why are we [as a society] still having this discussion? It’s fun to talk about and it’s interesting but it’s sad that we still have a lot of guilt surrounding our [sexual] experiences. What does that say about us?”

By the by, I’ve heard the movie is so-so but Anna Faris is fabulous in interviews. I digress. It got us thinking in the MM office about numbers. Does it matter how many people someone’s slept with? And why do we even care? And has anyone ever asked you how many people you’ve slept with? And was wine involved?

According to Rick there’s a theory about sex numbers. If a man tells you how many people he’s slept with, you divide the answer by three. Ask a woman, and multiply her answer by three. This is generally speaking, of course. And we’re not sure what protocol is if a man tells you a number that’s not a multiple of three.

So have you ever lied about your number? Do you care about other people’s numbers? As a female would it bother you if your male partner had slept with fewer people than you?